The following interview with Norman Gryspeerdt was published in SLR Camera magazine in April 1971:

Have you ever wondered who takes those pictures that you see outside the cinemas promoting new films or showing little snippets of a feature that can be seen inside? We recently went along to record this interview with a professional photographer who takes these pictures for such great names in the film world as Rank Organisation and Universal Films. He is Norman Gryspeerdt - a stills photographer in the world of movies.

Although this question is getting to be a rather regular feature in our profiles Norman, I think in your case your beginnings in photography have an interesting story behind them haven't they. Just how did you start out?

"Well, it seems rather a long time ago now, but I remember clearly my first contact with a camera. I think the only reason I ever took up photography was for a rather strange reason - I was able to run fairly fast at school. It was at a school sports when I was about nine years old. The first prize was a box camera and I won it. I was very keen from then on. All the time I was at school a friend and I used to be constantly taking pictures of everything we could lay our eyes on. Every single school function was given a very full coverage. In those days everything had to be taken on plates a rather far cry from today of course.

After leaving school I didn't immediately become a photographer. In fact I started my career as a butcher and took over the small group of shops.

When the war came I joined up with the Navy as a photographer and this was really a very useful experience. When I eventually came out of the Navy I decided that butchering was no longer quite what I wanted to do in life and I got a job with a company involved with fashion photography, just off Fleet Street.

Then one day a job came up where I had to go out and photograph this fur coat that was going to be worn by Maggie Lockwood at some function or other. When I got to the furriers I took a couple of shots of the coat being worn by one of their models but I wasn't really happy with them and decided that it would be a rather better shot if I could get Maggie Lockwood actually wearing the coat. Well, the outcome was that I eventually got permission from the Rank Organisation whom she was under contract to, to do the shot and in fact the shooting turned out to be a great success. From this initial job for them I met one or two people at Rank and eventually they offered me a job as a still photographer with them."

Norman, what exactly does a still man's work include?

"Well, it's an extremely varied job really. The pictures that he takes can be used for all sorts of purposes. Promotion and general publicity or advertising, plus of course the shots that you see outside a cinema. Although this latter function has died a bit just lately because you see fewer and fewer actually on display. Once upon a time there were dozens on view outside a cinema foyer but now just a few selected ones.

Nowadays it is every still man's ambition to get his pictures published in the big-circulation magazines like Life and the National Dailies. Stills taken on the set are also used for continuity purposes as well. Often the art departments or the set-builders require reference shots to work from: all this comes under the jurisdiction of the stills man."

You've covered quite a few pictures now. Can you tell us about the latest ones.

"The two most recent were 'Anne of the Thousand Days', and 'Scrooge' which as you probably know has only just been released. Another film that I particularly enjoyed working on was 'Isadora' which starred Vanessa Redgrave. I'm a great admirer of her - she's really a marvellous actress. I also did 'Leo the Last'."

Do you take your still while the actors are actually working or do you have special sessions just for the taking of the still shots?

"This rather depends on the size of the production. For a big picture this is really a complete impossibility. Production time is very expensive so you can't afford to take up the whole company's time for a single moment. So what we do is take our stills either during the shooting itself or at rehearsals. Rehearsals are really the best time because any camera noise doesn't really matter at all. The loud clonk of an SLR mirror in the middle of a delicate love scene can be a little upsetting to actors and it certainly doesn't endear you to the director."

I know that you are a great believer in SLRs, Norman, and that you use a Pentacon Six for a lot of your work; what other equipment do you use?

"Yes, I do like my Pentacon. It's very easy to work with on the set. I use it pretty well exclusively for all my portrait shots fitted with the 180mrn Biometer. This is a quite superb lens even when wide open. In the main I prefer the larger format 2¼ square.

Obviously there are occasions where I am forced to use 35mm. Take for example the dance scenes in 'Isadora' - here I used my motorised Nikon and reeled off miles of film. But motors do have disadvantages - if, for example, you have a particular event that you want to capture and it only takes up a small instance of time it is possible to miss the peak of the action with a motor. I would in this case rather back my judgement with a single shot and ensure the capture of this important moment.

In the main I prefer using 21 square simply because the quality is that much better although this is not to say that good quality cannot be obtained with the smaller format size - it certainly can. If I'm shooting colour I would use Ektachrome. Daylight or Type B depending on the location and sometimes negative stock such as Ektacolor professional. From negative originals we can make either display prints or large transparencies. All these are done by the studio laboratories because time is often very important.

The final stage in the operation is when the publicity department and the publicists take over and examine the contacts and order up their choice of shots from the labs. These are sent all over the world sometimes.